Hi-

I have been looking on various search engines for several hours now and I can't find any useful info on how I can enable large file support (files > 2GB) on debian woody.

Can anyone assist? The situation is that I am trying to unzip a very large .gz file and it is choking after the unzipped file gets to be greater than 2147483647 bytes.

Some of the information I have found indicates that it is supported in the woody distribution but may be an off-by-default option in the install. I can't even find any info about how to check and see if it has been enabled in my current kernel... what would be the best way to do this?

And even if I am able to enable it, what about support for large files in other apps? (specifically gunzip)

Any assistance appreciated. Thanks.

I believe the maximum file size isn't affected by your distro so much as it depends on your kernel (version and options enabled) and the filesystem (ext3, reiserfs, etc.) you use. I would investigate the matter from this angle.

If you're comfortable configuring your own kernel, I'd say this is a good way to start. Download a kernel tarball, untar it, and make menuconfig in its directory. I don't have a kernel configuration in front of me as I'm on a windows box now, but I believe it would be in the filesystem options if it's there.

If you're not comfortable with compiling your own kernel, I'd try looking at the different kernels available to install, or try installing a newer version of the kernel. Make sure the filesystem you're using for that drive supports the necessary filesize - for example, I don't believe a FAT32 filesystem will support such large files.

Good luck!

Thanks for the info.

BUT...

I am cool with compiling a new kernel, but I am concerned that doing that will break apt-get (since how will it know about any new dependencies on current packages?). Or am I missing something? On my RedHat boxes I pretty much compile everything manually and don't use rpm at all except to query currently installed packages. But for my debian box, I have mostly relied on apt-get which has worked well for me so far - ideally, I would like to keep relying on it. Will that be an issue if I decide to recompile?

I use Debian too, and you can compile your kernel without worrying about apt-get. All of the dependencies apt-get handles are library / program dependencies - it doesn't know anything about your kernel features (at least, as far as I know).

You can compile your own kernel with whatever features you want, and it won't hurt your apt system. If you're unsure, you can leave both kernels in your boot menu, and try booting to your newly-compiled one. This is probably a good idea in case your newly made kernel is misconfigured, anyways.

Basically, go ahead and give it a shot, it shouldn't affect apt / dpkg at all, they will coexist well with your custom kernel!